Allready before leaving Switzerland we had in mind to start fishing in New Zealand. After a month of cycling, we are now more used to the daily routins and the load on the bikes. As we happend to find a small telescope fishing rod in a shop we decided to go for it. It turned out to be a toy rod for kids, on 50% sale. Luckily fishing is a very serious hobby for Kiwis and even toy rods are made to be used. Anyway, we got excited and organised an all year licence and made out a lake we could include in our route. In Rotorua in « Fishing & Hunting » we outet ourselves as beginners and the helpful employee adviced us carefully for the most necessary gear we would need as well as how to use is it and we got information about the lake we had planed to go to.
There we are spending our holiday, three nights, at lake Rerewhakaaitu south east of Rotorua with a toy rod and a proper rod. Right at the lake is a DOC camp with great space, toilets and water, where a pensioned Kiwi has allready set up a hugh family tent, to reserve space for the coming holidays, when he will stay 2-3months and children, grandchildren, relatives as well as friends will join him.
Highly motivate we put our rods together – as with two left hands. The line got tingeld up…. We manage to change the handle from left handed to right handed position and happily fix a metalic shiny spinner. At the water our first throws were wonderful to observe: great evening sunlight at the picturesc lake with ducks and other birds, I threw my first hook into the greens and created a horrible mess wih the line trying to get it loose. I was very frustrated – but who buys a toy rod! It took some dirty words, two dirty wet legs, patience to untangel many meters of line until I could go for the second spin. I was sort of glad, when it sounded similar out of Michel´s corner… Our learning curve picked up quickly though and now it is normally us taming the rod and not the other way round. We enjoyed several hours per day with this meditative occupation. Our throughs got really good. Only the trouts didn´t really understand their part with biting!
Another pensioned Kiwi, a passionate fisher and tramper, who has spent two nights at the campsite, is moving calmly on the lake with his blow up kayak and his rod. He gives us tips and infromation about the hiding places of the trouts – deep down in the pools oft he lake, hardly in our reach. Proudly he shows his 40cm trout and later in the evening he comes over with one of its filets – beautifully rose flesh, almost like salmon it melts on our toungs.
The third evening we were invited to a BBQ – none of us could contribute any fish that day.
